The not so Forbidden City

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Well for starters, I have to say that it seems a bit of a misnomer when for a few quid you can buy an entrance ticket and electronic guide… sorry, there I go being cynical again. I tried to get Lexa to write this blog because I really wasn’t that taken with this famous Beijing landmark and didn’t want to sound even more negative than usual, unfortunately she’s busy cooking dinner so I’m afraid you’re stuck with me. So here goes - I’ll try my best to think beyond the dusty exhibits and sub-zero temperatures that made my bones feel like they would shatter if I bumped into something and remember some good bits of our day….

Sure it was big and had lots of rooms, inner walls, outer walls, private quarters, concubines quarters and some bloomin’ huge doors, but somehow it didn’t feel very impressive to me. Oh dear this isn’t going well is it…. I think that my biggest problem was that despite the thousands of tourists milling around, it wasn’t brought to life in anyway - the display rooms were staid and uninspiring and as a passing ignorant tourist with limited imagination, it failed to deliver a picture of what it would have been like in its heyday.

Highlights for me were bronze statues such as the lion and the sections of carved stone like the waterway in the ‘wired for tourism’ photo. I don’t think Chinese architecture does it for me, it’s all a bit samey and to my untrained eye the Forbidden City buildings simply appeared to be scaled up versions of any other pagoda style construction, give me some intricate Indian Jali stone fretwork, built into numerous storey’s of carved stone with inlayed marble anyday.

Sorry that didn’t work at all did it, maybe I should go and offer to take over making dinner…..

In hindsight I’m still glad that we went to see it and I would never go as far as to say ‘don’t bother’ and maybe on a sunny day, without the scaffolding over the largest of the palace buildings I would have left inspired…

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